The present invention relates to photographic developing machines, and more particularly to improvements in machines which are especially suited for development of exposed photographic paper. Still more particularly, the invention relates to improvements in machines for processing rolls of exposed photographic paper which are confined in containers or cassettes (hereinafter called cassettes).
It is known to place cassettes with rolls of convoluted exposed photographic paper therein onto a feed table which is located in a darkroom and through which the leader of the web of convoluted paper is fed to a lighttightly sealable chamber for connection to a strip-shaped threading element or tape which advances the leader through the tanks of a developing machine. As a rule, the feed table is formed with an elongated channel which communicates with the chamber and through which the leader of a roll of convoluted paper must advance toward and into the chamber. Since a modern developing machine is designed to simultaneously develop several webs of photographic paper, the feed table has several channels so that two or more webs can be conveyed at the same time. A drawback of such machines is that each channel of the feed table only permits the passage of a web having a predetermined width. Thus, if the machine is to simultaneously process several webs of different widths, the respective cassettes must be placed in corresponding positions so as to insure that the webs which are stored therein can pass through the neighboring channels of the feed table. The design of the feed table is such that a cassette for a relatively narrow web cannot be mounted adjacent a channel which can permit the passage of a wider web or vice versa. Therefore, the versatility of conventional machines is rather low, and this can be overcome only by resorting to several feed tables or by using very large feed tables with an inordinately large number of channels.
Laboratory equipment resembling the just discussed machines is available on the market under the trade name LABOMATOR 5 ZOLL (manufactured by the assignee of the present application).